Prince George’s hospital site starts and stops with Metro

Prince George’s County and Maryland leaders say that bringing jobs to the areas around Metro stations is one of their top priorities. They can follow through on this promise by making sure that the $600 million regional medical center planned for the county lands at a Metro site.

When Metro came to the region starting in 1976, suburban counties handled it in different ways. Arlington zoned the areas by its stations for lots of new residences and offices while keeping lower densities farther away.

As a result, more than half of the county’s property tax assessment value comes from only 11 percent of its land area — its two Metro corridors — and it enjoys consistently low property taxes as a result. While the Rosslyn-Ballston Metro corridor added tens of thousands of jobs and homes, traffic levels remained largely unchanged, while rates of riding transit, walking and bicycling spiked.

David Alpert is the founder of Greater Greater Washington and its board president. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He now lives with his wife and daughter in Dupont Circle.